"Promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine." Those are the words that have haunted me for the past year. And the answer I've found has been disturbing.
I am the machine. Others will tell me that my cybernetic enhancements do not make me that way. Those who do so are missing the point.
I became a machine by choice. I told myself every step of the way that it was to do my duty in the service of protecting humanity.
That's all there was at the beginning. Duty. Eliminate the target and resupply for the next mission.
Then they paired me with an A. I. Unit. Cortana was the name they gave it. She was a useful tactical tool that I came to rely on more and more. And during the missions we did together she became something more without my notice.
It wasn't until she told me that she had left most of herself behind in the Didact's ship that I realized how much she had come to mean to me. And it wasn't until I realized she was lost that I began to feel my heart slow until it stopped beating entirely.
Gone. The one thing that had kept me going through all the blood and fire was nothing more than a memory.
And now as the pieces of my armor are removed for the first time in years I see it more clearly. I am the machine. And I will be broken for as long as I live without her. I will be broken without Cortana. My missing piece.
